


Silent Sufferers

by LananiA3O



Series: Batfam Week - Arkham-verse [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Past Child Abuse, Swearing, references to past torture, torture (very briefly and not very graphic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 04:10:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11200161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: Bruce’ and Alfred’s ‘deaths have left the family in shambles and no one suffers more than Dick. In a moment of what he deems temporary insanity, Jason decides to help his brother. He never expected anything in return.





	Silent Sufferers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [litnerdhood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litnerdhood/gifts).



> Set after Batman Arkham: Knight (and before A Normal Life, for those of you who are reading my series).  
> Gifted to litnerdhood, who breezed through all of ‘Red’ and ‘Ill Weeds Grow Apace’ in about a week of total reading time and commented on every - single - chapter. You are a real trouper and I am beyond grateful for all your comments :)

It started with a disgustingly misty Sunday morning and a couple thousand drops of water on a freshly filled grave.

It had taken the clearing crew and the police almost a week to filter through the grounds of what had once been the manor, but in the end, the conclusion had been unanimous: Bruce Wayne was dead. There had not even been enough left of the place to determine a point of origin for the detonation – the closest guess anyone could make was ‘multiple’ – and even if the body had been reduced to ash and smithereens, Bruce Wayne was very definitely considered dead. Never coming back.

Of course, that last detail had never been leaked to the press and so the replacement had bought a fittingly outrageously expensive mahogany monstrosity of a coffin with linings of Egyptian silk and gold filigree on the edges to house Bruce Wayne’s Schroedinger body. On one hand, Jason hated the fucking ostentatious display of wealth, even in the eyes of death, especially a _fake_ death. Bruce was alive. He was sure of it. Alive, licking his wounds, planning his return, and not giving a rat’s ass about what his ‘death’ had done to his family. On the other hand, he could understand the reasoning behind the charade. ‘Coffin’ usually meant ‘final’, even for a closed viewing, and ‘final’ meant ‘less conspiracy theories floating around and making everybody’s life more miserable’.

And there had been plenty of ‘miserable’ to go around.

They had had a total of four services.

The first had been a non-public, all business, memorial service for Bruce Wayne in one of his summer retreat ‘safe-houses’. Anyone who had been anyone in Bruce Wayne’s public life had been invited – important business partners, important business rivals, a few select journalists, Gordon, Cash, and a number of other individuals who had been deeply involved with Wayne Enterprises or Bruce Wayne in a professional sense. Most of them were nothing but blood-thirsty motherfuckers, whose only reason for showing up was to see if there was any way they could carve off some of that delicious billion dollar Wayne pie, now that its overall protector and owner was gone. Dick, Tim and Barb had soldiered on throughout all of it, heads held high despite their grief, always pleasant and polite despite their disgust for some of the people they had had to invite, and just solemn enough to make everyone back the fuck off eventually. Jason had watched the charade from a mile away through the scope of his rifle and a bug he had planted in one of the vases in the room.

The second one had been a very, very private affair, a gathering of superheroes, people Batman and Nightwing had been sporadically working with throughout the years, up to and including Superman and Wonder Woman. The only one who had been there in her civilian identity had been Barbara, who was the only one who had the honor of not having to deny that she had known who Bruce Wayne was. She had worked with him, after all, and that fact had become public knowledge soon enough after Halloween. Tim and Dick had reacted appropriately shocked and appalled at this ‘revelation’, maintaining their disguises of the unknowing kids who had just gotten lucky to be adopted by Bruce Wayne without ever finding out about his secret life as Batman. Once inside the house, though, there had been no need for Robin or Nightwing to pretend anything, and while Tim had held back his tears pretty well – Jason imagined having been taken on as Robin very late and then having been stuffed in a cell by the Batman himself had kind of put a damper on his capacity for outright grief – Dick had not been shy to let the tears flow freely, clinging on to everyone who would so much as offer him a hug in support.

The third service had been an even smaller gathering, this time, in honor of Alfred. The media might have forgotten about him and the superhero community might never have noticed him, but if Bruce had been the spine of their family, Alfred had been the heart. Of his four siblings, one had passed already. One had refused to come, still bitter about Alfred’s decision to stay in Gotham for the rest of his life and even beyond, as outlined in his will. One had been too sick to travel. The one brother who had made it to Gotham, together with his own child and Alfred’s estranged daughter, had made it very clear that – as much as he mourned the loss of his older brother – too many bridges had been burned in their family. He had not stayed for long, and while constantly courteous and polite in a way that was so very much like Alfred that Jason was sure he had learnt it straight from his brother, he had also been much more distant, much colder than Alfred would ever even have had the capacity to be. The result had been a memorial service that had been awkward for everyone and that had ended after only one hour. For the first time in years, Jason had found himself agreeing with any of the others: the brevity of this affair had been both a blessing to them and an insult to Alfred’s memory.

And now they were here: service number four, the actual, fucking burial. Gotham’s constantly cloudy sky was being fittingly pissy about the entire affair, hammering down torrential rain upon them, as they carried the two coffins to their assigned lots and lowered them into the ground. Holes were filled, prayers were said, hands were shaken, shoulders hugged, and soon enough it was only Dick, Tim, and Barb in front of the two fresh graves with their marble headstones and the golden lettering. The date 2017-11-01 stared at him mockingly through the scope of his sniper rife.

 _Congratulations! You actually did it,_ the Arkham Knight sneered in the back of his mind.

 _Excellent work, Todders_ , Joker added. _I knew I could rely on you!_

“Shut up!” Jason bit his lip underneath the helmet, hard enough to draw blood and the familiar taste made him feel a little better. He deserved the pain. Dick, Tim, and Barb did not. He knew that now, having seen the evidence of Bruce’s desperate search for his lost son on the Batcomputer. Joker was a liar. The Arkham Knight was a liar. He was done listening to either of them. _Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, just shut the FUCK up, both of you!_

“We’ll find whoever did this.” Barb’s voice was industrial strength steel, wrapped in a silky cocoon of bitterness and grief. “I will find whoever did this and when I get my hands on them, I’ll make them rue the day they were born!”

“Amen.” Tim set down the two wreaths they had brought – white roses, lilies, and gladioli – and muttered a quick prayer that even the audio receivers in Jason’s helmet could not pick up from the distance. What they did pick up, was his question to Barbara. “And you’re one-hundred percent sure that this was not the Arkham Knight’s doing?”

“Two-hundred percent,” Barb answered immediately.

“I honestly don’t care right now.” It had been Dick’s voice, but the sound was nothing like Jason had ever heard. Hollow. Devoid of any cheer and energy. “Can we please not start this over Bruce’s grave? Over Alfred’s grave?”

The replacement nodded solemnly. “Good idea. We should get back to the car. Head back home for now.”

“Go ahead,” the tiny smile Dick gave him was a miserable excuse of a display of re-assurance. “You just got out of the hospital. You should be resting. Go back to the car, both of you. I’ll join you in a minute.”

He watched Barbara and the replacement look at each other in a mixture of concern and consideration, before turning to Dick once more. “Fine,” Barbara said. “But if you’re not in the car with us within the hour, I’m coming back to get you.”

Dick looked after them as they left. The smile stayed just until they were out of his line of sight and vanished in the instance. Jason quickly grappled to the other end of the church to get a better angle at what was happening.

It was a choice he regretted almost instantly.

The rain was still hammering down relentlessly, trenching both of them, and plastering Dick’s finely tailored suit and expertly groomed hair to his skin tighter than the latex he wore at night. His eyes were focused on the clouds above, wet from more than rain, but burning like a thousand suns.

“Why?” Jason couldn’t recall ever having heard Dick sound so crushed. Somehow, it made his gut feel about five degrees colder than the rest of his body. “Why them? You already took my mother and father. You already took Jason!” Suddenly, Dick was pacing, small, frantic steps up and down the row of Wayne family graves while his hands ran over his face and through his hair, trying in vain to tame the unruly, wet strands. He was, quite literally, raging at the heavens.

“Dear God... why? What have I ever done to you?! What did Bruce—what did _Alfred_ ever do to you?! It’s not fair! Just why?! Why, you fucking son of a bitch?!!!”

His only answer was the harsh prattling of the rain as it pearled off the ornate headstones. Dick looked at Bruce’s epitaph as if he wanted to simultaneously hug the stone it was engraved on and take a sledgehammer to it.

“God... I’m so sorry, Bruce.” He sank to his knees with one hand clasped in front of his mouth. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for all the fights we had. I’m sorry for avoiding you ever since I moved. I’m sorry I didn’t even properly say goodbye to you. I—You were my father, Bruce. My second father and you failed at it pretty damn hard sometimes, but... you were still my dad... I’m sorry...”

Slowly, his gaze fell onto the second, smaller headstone next Bruce’s grave. “Alfred... God, I miss you, Alfred. I know I was quite the nuisance sometimes... while you were the best grandfather anyone could have wished for. I was so damn lucky and I never even acknowledged it. I’m so sorry...”

Whatever else Dick had been planning to say was lost in between the sound of the water falling from the sky and the sounds of the water falling from his eyes, as choked sobs wrecked his body, bending him over until he was almost curled into a ball, and rendered his speech unintelligible. By the time the tremors finally stopped and Dick slowly stood up to brush the grass stains off his trousers and the excess water off his face, his eyes were red and raw.

Jason cursed as he disassembled his sniper rifle and reached for the grapple gun once more. This was not what he had had in mind when he had planned to kill the bastard and salt the fucking ashes. If – no, when – he was going to meet Bruce again, we would deck the motherfucker straight in his chiseled face.

***

Things did not get better after the funeral, at least not for Dick. Blüdhaven was only a thirty-minute drive away from Gotham, but with everything going on in both cities, it might as well have been on the other side of the country. Whenever he was not busy trying to get the press off his back – both for statements concerning Bruce’s death and what the current status of the inheritance was, as well as vehemently shooting down allegations that he might be Nightwing – Dick had to deal with his hive of corrupt blood-sucking co-workers as well. Blüdhaven PD had never had a James Gordon, and the difference was staggering to say the least.

Blüdhaven, Jason quickly came to realize, was Gotham stuck twelve years ago, back when Batman had been only a myth and GCPD had been a mockery of law enforcement and justice. Dick, while doing an excellent job as Nightwing, was failing hard as Officer Dick Grayson, not for lack of professional competence – he was probably the best-trained cop on the force, even before he had left the academy – but because of his stubborn refusal to get his hands dirty, to crack a few skulls where skulls needed cracking, to work outside the law when needed. Gordon had been able to afford this kind of idealism, because Batman – an entirely separate person – had been around to cross the lines he could not, but Dick Grayson did not have that luxury. He was trying to be both Batman and Gordon at once and it took Jason less than three days of observation to see that it was stretching him thin. Bruce’s death seemed to have done the rest, ruining what little good sleep he got in between shifts and causing him to make just the tiniest mistakes here and there.

In a city like Blüdhaven or Gotham, tiny mistakes could be the difference between life and death.

The first time Jason noticed the shadow, Dick had just gotten out of the Walmart on Ninth Street that he usually went to after his Thursday shift at the BPD. For all the care Nightwing took in choosing different patrol routes every night, Officer Dick Grayson was very much a creature of habit. The road home between his precinct and his high-rise apartment just south of the Spine could be covered in a brisk half-hour walk, and Dick covered it twice a day. The Walmart was halfway down the line, and Dick frequently stopped by for quick shopping sprees that lasted no more than ten minutes and resulted in him strolling from the store with a shopping bag full of cereal, microwavable instant-lunch crap, milk, eggs, and the occasional beer. He left his receipts in the shopping cart, too, and the first time Jason had picked one of them up, he had frowned at the hasty, nearly indecipherable handwriting that proved that his nutritional choices were not just the result of an under-stocked store.

This time, he was not the one doing the picking.

The man was short, stocky, and dressed in what he probably presumed was inconspicuous, but just screamed ‘stalker’ to Jason – a long trench coat in drab colors, a hat with a wide enough brim to cover half his face and leather gloves even though the weather had still remained surprisingly warm for early November and nowhere near cold enough to break out the winter attire. He turned the crumpled paper over, tossed it into the nearest trash can, and followed Dick at a good distance of fifteen meters until he got to the bank branch where Dick always withdrew his money from the ATM.

The next day, he was already there when Dick passed by, fiddling with one of the machines to mingle with the crowd, before following him down Jefferson Avenue for two minutes, then veering off into an alley by the Barnes & Noble at the corner. The day after that, he was waiting in the book shop.

It was twelve days past Halloween when he finally, successfully managed to track Dick all the way back to his apartment building, watching from across the road through a pair of binoculars as Dick opened his mailbox and retrieved what was likely not good news judging from the face he made.

“Address confirmed,” the man muttered into his phone as he retreated back to the shadows of the nearby alleys. “I’ve had a greaser at BPD fix his schedule. It will be done by tomorrow night.”

Red Hood waited until the call was finished before dropping down behind him, silent as a shadow, and bringing him into a chokehold. The fool tried to fight back, but earned nothing but an amused chuckle, a dislocated shoulder, and a knee to the stomach in return. He used the opportunity of having this bastard bent over, injecting him with a carefully measured sedative, grabbing him by the lapels of his coat, and dragging him through the maze of alleys back to the shady, little excuse of a street that he had parked the stolen car in. It was almost eleven in the evening after all. Nightwing was bound to be swinging from the twenty-eighth floor of that skyscraper soon.

***

The man awoke to the disorienting, claustrophobic nightmare of a black plastic bag over his head, and the sound of metallic clicking over the lull of crashing waves. He also awoke to the feeling of being strapped to a chair, with his hands tied to the arm rests and his naked feet tied to the legs. The ensuing struggle as he realized what position he was in was accompanied by a string of panicked murmurs through the duct tape over his mouth.

Jason got up slowly, circling his captive twice with deliberate steps that stopped the frantic pushing, pulling, and crying, but not the racing of his heartbeat. The man was terrified. Jason _knew_. He would have known it even without the hood. He had been there.

“Wakey, wakey, bastard!” He ripped the bag off in one swift motion, watching on stoically as his prey started looking around, trying to identify where the hell he was. Go ahead and try, Jason thought. He had picked this dockside warehouse carefully. No one had been anywhere near this place in months, almost all the surveillance cams were broken, and ownership of the premises was still being discussed in court. No one had found Red Hood here in almost two weeks. No one would find this guy.

“Batman isn’t coming to save you.” Jason stated as a matter of fact. “Nightwing isn’t coming to save you. Nobody knows you’re here. Nobody will know you ever were here when we are done.” He grabbed his chair from where he had left it and sat down right in front of the man. “And frankly, Anthony Zucco, I don’t think they’d care, even if they knew.”

That drew a shocked little cry from his captive, and Jason felts his lips curl into a smile underneath the helmet. “Wondering how I know you, huh? You’re probably also wondering where you are, who I am, what I want with you, and why you’re tied to a chair, ain’t that right, Tony?” He muttered something that sounded vaguely like ‘go to hell’ through the gag and Jason shook his head. “You see, Tony, I’d love to chat, but I don’t have time for this, so here’s how this is going to go down: I’ll ask you two questions. That’s all. Two silly, little questions. If you don’t answer or if you try to get cocky with me, I’ll break one of your bones. Like this.”

He reached for the hammer he had bought for the occasion and brought it down sharp onto Zucco’s right pinky, drawing a loud how from him in return.

“See, that was the distal phalange of your right pinky. Do you know how many bones you have left to break in your body? Two-hundred and six. Do you want to be here all night? Because I don’t.” He broke the rest of his finger for good measure, then did the same to the one on the left hand and tore the duct tape off his mouth. “So, let’s get down to business. Here is what I already know: you’ve been tailing Dick Grayson. You have rigged his work schedule so he will be extra-exhausted when he comes home tomorrow. You are planning to kill him. Here is what I want _you_ to tell _me_ : who hired you?”

“Who says anybody hired me?” Tony spat at his feet. “That brat ruined me! Batman would never have come after me, if it had not been for that little fairy! I spent the last ten years in prison because of him!”

 _And yet despite being jailed for double-murder, someone successfully and anonymously bribed your parole board_ , Jason mused as he spun the hammer in his hand. He mustered Zucco from head to toe. Sweating, trembling, light tapping off the feet, no direct eye contact... and despite the fact that his words had been angry in vocabulary, the tone had been deeper into the territory of fear rather than anger. He removed his helmet slowly and forced his lips back into the smirk, knowing that nothing was more unsettling than watching your torturer smile at you the whole time. “Manners, Tony! It is very rude to lie to people.”

He brought the hammer down again and again. Halfway through the twenty-seven bones of Zucco’s right hand, the thug finally caved.

“Maroni!” There were tears streaming down his flushed face as he shouted the word into the emptiness of the warehouse. “Rossana Maroni! She wants payback for the bat ruining her family! She asked me to... to take out the bits of Grayson trash I missed.”

Anger curled in Jason’s gut like a snake. Dick was many things. Spoiled. Obnoxious. Over-eager. Over-friendly. Cocky. Messy. Occasionally lazy. But he was not trash. He slammed the hammer onto the metacarpals in Zucco’s left hand and got a loud howl in return.

“I’m not lying, I swear! Rossana Maroni! It’s—“

“I believe you, Tony,” Jason admitted as he grabbed him by what little hair had remained on his balding head and turned him up to face him. “But I said I had two questions. So... question number two: who’s the back-up?”

Of course, Tony denied that there was such a thing. Jason wasn’t surprised. Few interrogation targets ever gave their torturers the full story right away. There was always that little bit of hope, that last thought of possible salvation, that made them hold out just a little. Especially when someone like the Maronis were involved. Granted, Rossana Maroni had spent most of her life overseas, having had very little contact with her Mafiosi father in Gotham, but that did not mean that she was any less vicious or dangerous than the rest of her family had been.

He had just finished breaking both his radius bones when Zucco finally gave in. His voice was marred by painful groaning and a flood of tears. “Walker... Drury Walker...”

“Killer Moth?” Jason raised an eyebrow at that. Walker hadn’t been in Gotham in a long time, at least not as far as he was aware, and he had never hunted in Blüdhaven before.

“If I don’t report back successfully by midnight, he is supposed to blow up the apartment.”

Jason mulled that information over in his head. They had only just confirmed Dick’s whereabouts today, which meant that there would likely be practically no time to actually plant an explosive. A skilled sniper could easily get a shot through the living room window from any of the skyscrapers on the other side of the Spine, if Dick was dumb enough not to draw the curtains after he got home (which he was not).

Since sniping was out of the options, that meant they had to shoot an explosive device into the building. A rocket launcher perhaps. Either way, the sheer weight of a sufficiently sized shell would mean a much more close-ranged approach. Probably from one of the higher apartment complexes across the street. There were only three that Jason could think of that would give a sufficient line of sight. It would be enough.

He dropped the hammer and stretched his hands, watching Tony Zucco sigh in relief. With a quick roll of his shoulders, Jason got up, drew one of his guns and put a bullet right between his eyes. One problem solved. Three left to go.

***

Taking down Killer Moth had been even easier than expected, mostly because he hadn’t even had to wait until the next day. He had been back in Gotham, working on a completely unrelated thing, when he had caught him through the scope of his sniper rifle. Walker had been lying in wait atop the Carmine hotel in the Bowery, while Jason had been on Pioneer’s Bridge. Despite the winds that were starting to pick up and finally assume a wintery chill, it had not been a very tricky shot. One bullet later, Killer Moth had been plummeting to the ground. Two problems solved. Two left to go.

Rossana Maroni was going to be a tougher nut to crack. None of the numbers Zucco or Walker had dialed were from outside the Gotham area, yet the name Maroni had not popped up in any of his searches. She was going by another name, a new identity, and tracking her down and dismantling whatever new business she was running was going to be a longer challenge. That left him with one more thing to take care off.

Identifying the BPD officer who had taken Zucco’s call had been a piece of cake. Trying to trace everyone who had been involved in setting up Dick’s schedule so he would be at his most vulnerable was not. Jason had spent the better part of Dick’s double shift hacking into BPD comms and databases, yet every time he had thought he had finally amassed a comprehensive and exhaustive list of co-conspirators, someone else had raised a flag. He was now at a list of sixteen names, and he still felt like there were more to find. He was starting to wonder if there were any good cops in BPD at all.

_Well, there is at least one._

It was almost eleven again. Rain was hammering down onto the dark gray asphalt of Blüdhaven’s streets, cold enough to occasionally turn into tiny pellets of ice, as Officer Dick Grayson arrived at his home address. His movements were more sluggish than usual. He fumbled with the keys to his mailbox just a little longer than before, then dragged his feet to the elevator.

Red Hood was perched on one of the three suitable apartment buildings opposite of Dick’s apartment, the one with the best view of the dwelling, watching through the scope of his rifle as the indicator light for the state-of-the-art, Wayne-branded alarm system ( _probably a donation from Barb_ ) went from ‘silently engaged’ red to ‘temporarily disarmed’ yellow. Dick shuffled through his door like a zombie and it was hard to blame him.

_Eight hours in the suit, sixteen hours in the uniform, no breaks._

He managed to slip out of his shoes, ditch his jacket on the floor and loosen the top three bottoms of his blouse before passing out face-down on the couch. Jason sneered and was just about to turn around and go when his eyes fell onto the alarm system once more.

It was still yellow.

“Oh, fuck you, Dick!” He disassembled the sniper rifle into his two individual guns quickly, stood up, and considered his options.

He could just leave now. It would be easy. Dump the list with the names of the dirty cops in the mail box. Turn around. Head back to Gotham. It wasn’t like he was lacking for things to do over there. Robin was still out of commission and the city was slowly going to hell again. He had his hands more than full. And besides, it was not like this was the worst area in Blüdhaven. Dick’s apartment was not very likely to get robbed. He had taken out the two hit men. And even if someone tried to break into Dick’s home, the noise was sure to wake him up, and whoever had picked that address would rue the day they had been born. It would be easy.

 _Or, we could, you know, check on him to make sure that he’s absolutely ok and turn his alarm system back on before we leave_ , not-Robin argued in the back of his head. Jason still was not sure where that hopefully naïve voice had come from, because Robin had died under a crowbar back in the Asylum, but it was a nice counterpart to Joker’s incessant laughter. And as much as Jason hated to admit it, not-Robin was sometimes right. _It would be the right thing to do._

 _“The right thing to do is not commonly the easiest one,”_ Jason could remember Alfred saying, usually in reaction to Jason’s very common question of why Alfred and Bruce were still bothering with him, especially considering how ticked off Bruce often seemed. _“Nor is it instantly rewarding in most cases, but what comes around, goes around, Master Todd. Sooner or later, you will be able to look back on the right choice and see the good it has done for you.”_

Jason sighed. It couldn’t hurt to take a quick look. Could it?

He double-and triple-checked the system first. The alarms were off, but the cameras were still on. He grappled onto a nearby fire-escape, brought up the network cracking program on his phone and set to work. He would not be able to shut off the cameras without alerting Oracle, but looping the last ten minutes? That was definitely doable. Once it was done, he grappled up to Dick’s balcony and slipped inside.

Richard Grayson was dead to the world. That was the only explanation Jason could find for how he managed to get within six inches of his face without waking him up. Dick was snoring softly, more passed out than asleep, his upper body rising and falling ever so slightly with each breath. His skin was unhealthily pale and it looked even worse next to the dark circles around his eyes and the utterly disheveled state of his hair. Two of his finger nails showed signs of nervous biting and judging from the way his uniform fit just a little more loosely than it had during the Arkham Knight’s last recon into Blüdhaven, he had lost weight too.

None of it was surprising, really. Dick had always been rubbish at taking care of himself. They both had been, Dick and Bruce. Jason was rather sure that neither one of them would have lasted long without Alfred.

Alfred, who had raised each of them like they were his own children. Alfred, who would work quietly behind the scenes to patch all the holes that needed patching, mend all the things that needed mending, before they were to add up to a weight strong enough to break his children’s backs.

 _Alfred, who would weep if he could see Dick’s apartment in this state_ , Jason thought glumly as he took a look around. The floor was littered with discarded, unwashed clothes. The furniture and everything on it – mostly pictures of Dick and various people – his parents, Bruce, Barb, Alfred, a few friends Jason did not recognize – were covered in a thin, but noticeable layer of dust. The windows looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in ages. He made the mistake of checking the kitchen cupboards and fridge to see if Dick at least had enough food to fend off starvation, only to be greeted by a wide array of spoiled dairy and meat that seemed just about ready to gain sentience and start verbally begging him to be thrown out. When he cautiously opened one of the many half-finished boxes of cereal, a small dot of brown fluttered right at him and he crushed it in his fist on pure instinct. The delicate creature was now smudged against his palm, but there was no mistaking the brown and yellow bands on those wings.

 _Looks like Walker wasn’t the only moth Dick should have been worried about_ , Jason thought with disgust as he tip-toed through the rest of the apartment. Dick was still passed out on the couch, and that pissed him off enough, because he could have shot him sixteen times by now, but that emotion soon paled against the sheer repulsion he felt at the sight of the bathroom. He had seen – and slept in – dumps that looked and smelled better than this place.

He was just about ready to wake Dick up and tear him a new one when the sight of the bedroom knocked the breath right out of him. The mess he had expected. The thick layer of dust was already starting to look familiar. But, Jesus Christ almighty, this could not be healthy. Jason muttered a string of curses under his breath as he looked at the myriad of pictures put up throughout the room. Bruce in his office. Bruce in the gym. Bruce at a press conference. Alfred in the kitchen. Alfred cleaning the manor. Dick and Alfred fixing up a broken fence in the garden, Dick and Bruce at breakfast together. Dick and Bruce at a gala. Dick and Bruce at some award ceremony.

He knew what was happening here. Dick was trying to cling onto every last happy memory he had of Bruce and Alfred, desperately trying to find some joy in these dark times, but Jason doubted this was the right approach. He thought of the tears over the grave. He thought of the young man currently passed out on the couch, too tired to notice the intruder in his home. This was not healthy and it was not safe.

“I hope you’re happy, Bruce,” Jason muttered through clenched teeth as he picked up the picture of him with two supermodels or singers or actresses or whoever the fuck these girls had been by his side. “Your disappearing act just fucked up your eldest son.”

With one last look at the man on the couch, Jason finally made a decision.

Step number one was Dick’s phone. He was sure there was an alarm on there somewhere, set up to wake him up in an hour or two so he could go on patrol. _Well, here’s one thing that’s not going to happen_ , Jason thought as he cracked the case open and took out the battery and sim card. He set them both down neatly on the coffee table before heading out the same way he had come in.

Step number two was that little 24/7 corner store he had seen just two blocks to the right of Dick’s apartment building. He didn’t even bother switching to a civilian look, instead grabbing one of the metal baskets from the front entrance and heading straight for the food aisles. Flour, sugar, baking soda, vinegar – lots of baking soda and vinegar – eggs, bread, oil, butter, fresh cheese, rice pasta, canned vegetables and mushrooms, tomato sauce, salt, onion salt, pepper, paprika, coriander, frozen cod, chicken breast, minced beef, and a few steaks. It was a very basic list, but he wouldn’t have trusted Dick with fancy cooking to save his life.

Next came the aisle with the household items. He grabbed two bottles of soap, one bottle of hand sanitizer, a fresh box of tabs for the dishwasher, detergent for the laundry – another thing in Dick’s home that he should have been happy to have, but hadn’t seemed to have used in weeks – four bottles of lemon-scented all-purpose cleaners, one set of kitchen towels, four sets of cleaning cloths, a duffel bag, and a roll of white, seven-gallons garbage bags. The cashier thankfully had the decency to stare at his masked face for only about ten seconds, before dutifully scanning and packing the goods, and accepting the cash Jason handed him.

Step number three was the real work. Jason sighed as he grappled up onto the balcony once more and slipped in with the grace and silence of a cat. Dick had not moved an inch and that in and of itself was alarming. Perhaps his assessment had been wrong. If someone were to break into this apartment right now, Dick would probably sleep through it all while they cleared out his home. He set the bags down carefully and got to work.

He decided to start with the bedroom, picking up the dirty clothes littering the floor and stuffing them into the duffle bag. He added the rumpled, smelly bed sheets while he was at it and put on new ones from the chest by the foot of the bed. He didn’t even want to think about how long it had been since Dick had last changed them. Once he was done, he took one of the cloths and a bottle of cleaner to every surface in the room. It took almost an hour, but eventually, the rich brown furniture actually looked rich brown rather than dusty gray and Jason felt a strange tinge of pride swell in his chest.

The bathroom was next, gross as it was. He ended up using the remainder of the first bottle, plus all of the second, and three new cloths, and he was pretty sure he had pulled half a wookie from the drains of the bathtub and the sink by the time he was done, but at least now the place shone and sparkled. No more filthy tiles. That alone had been worth it, and he shuddered to repress the memories of Arkham that were threatening to resurface and hamper his productivity. He tied the trash bag with a fierce and resolute tug and ditched it right inside Dick’s front door. The half-wet towels that had been discarded all across the bathroom floor joined the rest of the laundry in the duffle bag. Alfred would have raised an offended eyebrow at the mixture of linens, towels, and normal clothes, but fuck it. He only had one shot at this.

The kitchen was undoubtedly the hardest part, not just because there was no door to close and shut off the noise that might wake Dick from his exhausted slumber – he was a bat after all, and whatever brain cells Jason was not currently wasting on figuring out how to clean up this mess, he was using on figuring out the fastest escape strategy – but also because he was not sure he had seen a kitchen this messy since he had first set up the training facilities for his militia. His men had learned soon enough that leaving any part of the facilities in a mess was the fasted way to getting their asses kicked outside of combat training. He had half a mind to kick Dick’s ass, too, but that would have meant a confrontation he was hoping to avoid for... a long time at least. Potentially forever. He wasn’t sure what Dick’s reaction to the revelation of Red Hood’s identity (or the Arkham Knight’s) would be. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to stomach it, if it were anger and rejection.

What he did know, was that every bit of food that was currently in this kitchen had to go. That included the moth-infested boxes of cereal, the furry yogurt in the fridge, the spoiled milk, the whatever-it-was that coated the counters and the top and inside of the oven, and the two sad apples that had turned brown and squishy in their dusty little bowl on the kitchen table. He dumped all of it into another three trash bags as carefully as possible and set them down next to the one from the bathroom.

This time, all-purpose cleaner was not going to cut it. It was enough for the counters, the table, the chair, the window, the cupboards, and even the fridge, but Jason frowned at the sight of the poor, abused stove. It seemed the state of Dick’s household appliances was indirectly proportional to his own personal state of grooming, and Jason could only hope that he never took any of his supermodel dates back to his place. Ditzy glamour girls or not, he would not wish this kind of hell on anyone.

He scrubbed all the cupboards with vinegar once, then peppered the stove with baking power, filled one of the empty cleaner spray cans with the remaining vinegar, and sprayed it on top of the powder. The reaction started instantly, causing a slight bubbling and sizzling that quickly turned the white to yellow as it soaked up the grease. Last but not least, he made sure to sort in all the food, circling the expiry dates with the red marker hanging from the kitchen calendar, and labeling the vinegar bottle as well. He ditched it underneath the sink, together with one of the remaining two bottles of cleaner and half the remaining cloths.

The living room was next, and while not particularly hard in terms of actual dirtiness, working his way through the room did nothing to help his paranoia. Dick _seemed_ fast asleep, aside from the occasional twitching of a foot or hand, but that could change in an instant, and Jason kept one eye on him at all times. Halfway through wiping down the coffee table, Dick suddenly turned sharply, grabbing one of the pillows his face had been pressed into and clutching it to his stomach as he rolled to face the center of the room. He was now close enough for Jason to feel his breath, had he not worn the helmet, and Jason felt every fiber of muscle in his body freeze. Dick murmured something incomprehensible as his feet kicked against the armrest on the opposite side of couch, before quieting down again. Jason counted silently to one-hundred before he allowed himself to let out the breath he had been holding and continued with his task. He returned to the kitchen one last time to wipe off the now greasy baking soda. The empty cleaner bottle and the remaining dirty clothes eventually went into the fifth and final trash bag and joined their brothers by the door.

Last of all, Jason stuffed all the dirty laundry into the washer, filled in the detergent, and set the program. He did the same for the dish washer – the only case in which Dick had behaved like a civilized person, actually putting his dishes into the machine, albeit in completely irrational and inefficient order, before fitting each sink with one bottle of soap, and adding the sanitizer to the sink in the bathroom. With a deep sigh, Jason returned to the living room and looked at his surroundings.

Even in the darkness of the night, the place suddenly looked _clean_. It looked _nice_. It looked like a _home_. Sure, it was certain to freak Dick right the fuck out the moment he woke up, but he could at least dream of him appreciating it even a little bit. He took the opportunity to sit down in the arm chair on the other side of the coffee table for a minute, to close his eyes and let the tension from his impromptu cleaning session drain from his limbs. According to the clock integrated into his helmet, it had taken him three hours to clean up the place, but despite the slow ache building up in his abused back and shoulders, he felt strangely at peace with his own body.

It was an incoming call from Oracle that finally broke the silence all around him. Jason gave one quick look at the prone body on the couch, then headed for the balcony.

“Oracle.”

“Wow.” Barb seemed stunned, although he doubted it was a bad thing. He could hear the amusement swinging in her voice. “I was not really expecting you to answer. Is everything ok?”

“Busy.” It was only half a lie. He still had a lot to do. He had just taken a break. That was not a crime, no matter how much Bruce had always made it seem so. “Where’s the fire?”

Barbara groaned. “I wish you hadn’t said that. I’ve got two situations here that I would really appreciate some help with. Number one, Firefly broke out of Blackgate. GCPD tracked him to Burnley, but then his trail ran cold. No pun intended.”

 _Firefly. Petroleum-based Napalm, military jetpacks and one hell of a lot of crazy._ Jason felt the burn scars on his palms and soles and the J on his face itch at the thought. This was not going to be pleasant. “I take it option number two is equally crappy?”

“Yeah, I don’t think you’re gonna like it,” Barb admitted. “I was trying to contact Nightwing, because I dug up some info that might be helpful on one of his cases, but I can’t seem to reach him. According to the cam footage from his apartment he’s asleep on the couch, but I can’t even reach his private phone.”

Jason felt his lips curl into a tiny smirk underneath the mask. “Fine. I’ll go wake the bird. Then I’ll go for the fly. I’ll report back in an hour.”

He didn’t wait for her reply to close the comms link. It was more than about time that he high-tailed it out of here. Jason sat down on the arm chair once more, reached for the blue ballpoint pen on the table, and retrieved the piece of paper with the BPD names from his pocket. The back was still blank, and he did his best to write in perfect block letters. He wasn’t sure if Dick would recognize his hand-writing if he were to write in cursive, but he would rather be safe than sorry.

_Working yourself to death is not going to bring Bruce back._

_Growing a new life form in your fridge is not going to bring Alfred back, either._

_You owe me $48,25._

He left the note on the table with the ‘cops that want you dead’ side up and gave one last look at Dick’s face. Most people looked younger and more peaceful when they slept, and Dick was no exception. All the cares of the world seemed lost on him for the moment. He looked tired and beaten, yes, but he was alive. There was a silver lining. “Savor the silence, Dickie. You’re just about in for one hell of an awakening.”

Finally, Jason headed for the bathroom and kitchen one last time to turn on the laundry and dishwasher, before returning to the living room and reassembling Dick’s phone. If the rumbling noises from the machines were not going to wake him up, Barb’s inevitable call surely would. He closed the door to the balcony after himself, grappled onto the nearest structure, disabled the video loop, and reactivated the security system.

He had already crushed a moth. Now it was time to crush a fly.

***

_Fuck winter in Gotham! Fuck snow! Fuck ice! Fuck blizzards! Fuck the stupid, fucking cold!_

Jason cursed under his breath as he grappled into the Diamond District, which was quite possibly the most posh part of town outside of the suburbs. Sometime over the last four days of January, the weather had decided to give everyone in the town the middle finger, bringing on a full-scale blizzard with temperatures that were in the negatives no matter which fucking scale you used, iced over streets that tripled the amount of traffic accidents and effectively crippled GCPD’s ability to arrive at a scene quickly, iced over ledges which effectively crippled _his_ ability to arrive quickly, and enough snow to severely hamper visibility.

It had been a lousy night, to say the least. Hell, as far as Jason was concerned, it had been a lousy week. From Barbara leading him to the little memorial grave Bruce had erected for him in the forest surrounding the manor, to getting tackle-hugged by Dick right in front of said grave, to being dragged off to Wayne Tower so he could meet up with Lucius and they could all listen to the presentation of Bruce’s will, the last week of January had already started out less than ideal. Granted, Dick and Lucius had taken his survival better than expected, but that had brought its own problems with it.

Jason still wasn’t entirely sure why he had eventually decided to let Barbara arrange an apartment for him. Maybe it had been guilt, because she had been begging him to let her do just that ever since All Saints Day. Maybe it had been misguided optimism, brought on by Bruce’s last will and testimony, which had managed to pack more emotion into one sentence than the bastard had used to display in a month. Maybe it had just been a temporary bout of insanity. That was actually the most likely option.

Whatever it had been, he was about to face the fallout now. Jason muttered a quick string of Spanish curses as he shrugged off his jacket and turned it inside out so that no one could see the red bat on his back, zipped up the hood to hide the red bat on his chest, and removed the helmet to tuck it away in the duffel bag he had brought, together with his guns and ammo. And pretty much everything else he owned. When you were moving from safe-house to safe-house every night, less really was more.

The cold hit him in the face like a set of brass knuckles, harsh, cold and unforgiving. It brought out the nerve damage in his back and shoulders, from the time spent strung up on a meat hook in the Asylum, but it also brought back memories of card board boxes, half-rotten food fished from dumpsters, and the sheer desperation that drove him to do _anything_ , anything at all, for just a few bucks that would mean the difference between life and death.

Yeah, it was safe to say Jason hated winter.

Barbara was waiting in front of the building’s main entrance, wrapped up in a very thick, very warm-looking fur coat, with the replace—Tim in an equally puffy coat right next to her. Jason eyed the house with a critical glance. It was built in the typical style of all of New Gotham’s houses, but the surveillance cams on the side of the building and the re-enforced double-pane windows hinted at just how much money must have been put into the restoration of it. It wasn’t Lacey Towers, but it looked clean, safe, and well-maintained, and that was good enough for starters. With a heavy sigh, Jason grappled down onto the deserted street and made his way over to the entrance.

Barb’s pout turned into a warm smile the instant she saw him. “Jason! I’m so glad you came!”

“Barb.” He gave her a quick nod, followed by an even shorter nod to Robin. “Replacement.”

“Tim—“

“It’s ok, Barb,” the replacement interrupted instantly. “Really, it’s fine. I’ll wait in the car.” Robin gave him an equally curt nod before turning to leave. “Good night, Jason.”

“Tim has done absolutely nothing to you,” Barb chided. “You shouldn’t be so hard on him.”

Jason groaned. “Are you going to give me the keys now? Because if I have to listen to a lecture first, I’d really rather go to one of my safe-houses.”

Technically, he didn’t. His safe-houses were good enough for being just that: safe-houses. A place to crash and recover from whatever ordeal the night had thrown at him, but this... this was an apartment, a proper home, or at least the promise of one, and as much as Jason hated himself for it, the idea filled him with hopeful anticipation. An anticipation that only grew as Barbara led the way up a ramp that looked much younger than the stairs, and into the building proper.

The foyer was spacious and bright, with four cameras monitoring the entire room. The mail boxes each had their own locks and a night guard in a Securitas uniform waited to greet them at the front desk. Barb handed over the papers proving that, yes, Jason was indeed a new tenant and they had the keys to show for it, before being directed to the nearest of three elevators. The layout of the place – from the stairs to the chandeliers – was definitely old architecture, but everything had been renovated and freshly painted, dousing the hall in a warm, ivory glow. The metallic gray elevators looked ridiculously out of place, but then again, nothing was ever perfect. Barbara waited until he had joined her inside the middle elevator before pushing the button for the eighth floor, not quite all the way to the top, but high enough to discourage many unwanted guests, even despite the lift.

“There’s an access hatch to the roof on the twelfth floor,” Barbara explained as they moved upwards. “It should give you a quick entry and exit route if the fire escape is not an option for some reason.”

“Neighbors?”

“Mixed bunch. First two floors are family apartments with five bedrooms each. Third and fourth, three bedrooms, fifth to twelfth, one bedroom. Most of the people on your floor are bachelors in their twenties and thirties. One couple. All apartments are properly insulated and sound-proof. The building’s owned by a grumpy old man who – and I quote – ‘has been lamenting the lack of affordable housing for bachelors’ for forty years now.”

Jason scoffed as the elevator doors opened. “So, like, what? Did he win the lottery or something?”

“Actually, that’s exactly what he did,” Barb grinned at him as she moved out into the hallway. The floor was carpeted, most likely for noise reduction, but at least it looked to be the kind of short, hotel-style carpet that could be easily cleaned. The walls and ceiling were painted in the same ivory tone as the foyer, and the doors were a deep rich auburn in color. They looked almost red in the warmth of the hallway’s lighting. Barb paused in front of the door to apartment 814 and pointed at the box next to it. “He’s also a security nut, so he didn’t mind when I asked for permission to have this installed for you. Punch in the access code to deactivate the alarm. If you want to, I can install a retina scanner in the door’s peephole, too.”

“I’ll do it myself,” Jason said and he merely shrugged his shoulders at the indignant look of mild hurt that ghosted across Barb’s face. “What’s the code right now?”

“12345678.”

Jason frowned. “Well, I know what I’ll be doing before I go to bed.” He punched in the code and waited until the alarm indicator had switched from red to green before taking the key Barbara held out to him and unlocking the door. It still felt strange, even after all these years, a door unlocking so easily, because he had the actual key rather than a lock pick.

Perhaps it was old habit. Perhaps it was paranoia. Either way, Jason peeked inside the apartment carefully before stepping into the internal hallway proper. Barbara was sharp on his heels, and the door closed behind her with a quiet clap.

They were in a hallway that ran parallel to the outside hall, albeit slightly thinner and with less lighting. It was cut short to his left and ended in a door that led to a small storage room with typical household devices: a vacuum cleaner, a broom, a mop with a bucket.

“There’s a basement storage room that comes with this apartment,” Barbara explained at his inquisitive look at the small room. “That’s what the other keys on the chain are for: big square key for the main entrance, big round key for your apartment, small square key for your mail box, small round key for your basement.”

Jason nodded before moving past the doorless entrance into what looked like the living room and on to another door to his left. The bathroom it led to was small, with only a toilet, a sink, a mirror, and lots of tiles. He backed out the moment he was done checking if the light switch, tap, and flush actually worked, and continued onwards to the door at the end of the hallway. The bedroom was probably smaller than it looked, but the way the furniture had been arranged certainly helped. The queen-sized bed had likely been meant to be right beneath the window, but it had been moved off to the side, leaving space on the other side for a wooden desk with separate drawers and generous surface area. Between the desk and the door, a closet and two drawers waited for his belongings, scarce as they were. Opposite the door, part of the room was taken up by a separate cubicle.

“En suite bathroom?”

“With bathtub, laundry, and drier,” Barbara confirmed as she watched him enter the bathroom and test the taps. “Tim moved the bed so you could have both the door and the window in sight while you’re asleep. That’s what you did at the manor, too, right?”

“Right...”

Jason remembered that night. He had just torn his way through the corrupt wardens of the orphanage Batman had dumped him in two days prior, and had come out with only a broken ulna as a serious injury. Batman had eventually come to finish the fight, and he had promptly tucked Jason into the Batmobile to take him _‘somewhere you’ll be safe and warm, somewhere you can have a chance’_.

Jason hadn’t believed him back then. It had to have been some kind of ploy to take him somewhere else where people would try to exploit him, and when Batman had dumped him on the doorstep of 1008 Mountain Drive, the residence of Bruce fucking Wayne, he had known that he’d been fucked. There was only one reason rich guys like that ever brought home street rats like him, and once he had realized that escape was not an option – that freaking butler was everywhere, and if it wasn’t him, it was the manor’s omnipresent alarm – he had resolved to improve his chances as much as he could, and not even a broken arm had stopped him from moving that monstrosity of a bed.

“So the replac—Drake has already been in here, huh?”

“Only to move the furniture,” Barbara assured him. “I would have done it myself, but... well...” She pointed at her legs and Jason instantly felt about two inches high.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s okay. Do you want to see the rest?”

Jason nodded slowly, leading the way back out of the bedroom and into the living room, with its massive windows, a huge couch and a large flat-screen TV. It really was like coming back to the manor all over again, if on a smaller base. There were a few plants in the nearby corners, but other than that, the place still looked relatively empty. _Good._ It meant he had less places to search for bugs.

The last room was the kitchen, connected directly to the living room through another doorless entrance. The counters were sparkling clean and he half-expected the cupboards to be the same, only to find them fully stocked with all the essentials – pasta, rice, oil, vinegar, canned vegetables... The fridge and freezer were the same, and there was lemon-scented cleaner and some fresh cloths underneath the sink, together with an unopened set of plastic cutlery and plates, which he raised a quick eyebrow at.

“Well, whoever stocked the kitchen cheaped out on the dishes.”

“More like ‘did not want to buy something you’d find ugly, so we’re leaving that to you.” Barb gave him a warm smile as one of her hands slid over the knuckles of his left. The touch still made him wince a little – physical affection was not exactly something he had had in spades over the last couple of years – but at least he didn’t pull away. “This is _your_ home now, Jason,” Barbara insisted. “ _You_ decide which color you paint the walls. _You_ decide what and who goes in here and what doesn’t. You and _only_ you. None of us are going to take those choices from you unless you specifically ask us to do so.” She watched his gaze flicker over to the can of sliced mushrooms he had retrieved from one of the cupboards and grinned sheepishly. “Okay, and we bought you some food for the first day or two so you can not starve while you’re getting your bearings, but you get the idea.”

“Yeah...” He wondered if he really did. The place looked nice. It was in a good neighborhood. Up high. Lots of windows, aka lots of escape routes. Warm, safe, clean. It had all necessary facilities. It was his. He took the keys from Barb’s hands and turned them over once before slamming them down hard on the counter and closing his eyes against the laughter swelling in the back of his head.

“Jason?” The concern was both in Barbara’s voice and in her eyes. “Is something wrong?”

“How about everything?” He chuckled over the words in an attempt to play down how much he meant it, but Barbara wasn’t fooled, of course. She had never taken any bullshit from any bat. She wasn’t going to start for him, now.

“I...” He wondered how to describe the tightness that had grabbed hold of his chest all of a sudden. Barbara deserved that much, after all the times she had turned a blind eye to all his transgressions as the Arkham Knight, as Red Hood. He was just about to go down the list again when he realized that that was exactly his problem.

“I don’t deserve any of this.” He didn’t. He really fucking didn’t. “Barb... you know what I did. To Gotham. To her people. To Bruce. To _you_.” He pointed at the spot on her cheek where there had been a nasty bruise right after Halloween, a token of the scuffle they had had in the Clock Tower. “I kidnapped you, Barb. Scarecrow nearly gassed you, because of me. Batman was unmasked, because I gave Scarecrow the means to get to him. And Stagg... do you know how many people there were on Stagg’s airship that are dead now, because of orders I gave to my soldiers?”

“Fifty-five.” Barbara didn’t even flinch, although her grip around his hand tightened. “Fifty-five people. Do you know what I also know? That some anonymous donor has been funneling almost a quarter million dollars into the City of Fear memorial fund for the loved ones left behind. I also know that for each and every single one of those fifty-five, an anonymous, but personalized condolence letter was sent to the fund’s administrators, to be handed out to their families.”

“I should be in jail.” Perhaps he hadn’t been clear enough. Jason pressed his lips into a thin line. “I should be dead or in jail. Why haven’t you told your dad yet? Or Cash? They must have at least a hundred arrest warrants on me.”

“They did for Batman, too,” Barbara lobbed back at him, although there was no bite, to anger to her words. “There are also warrants for Batgirl. And Robin. And Nightwing in Blüdhaven. We are family, Jason. We need to stick together. Especially now.”

He watched her head for the fridge and procure a bottle of Vietti from the top compartment. Next to the expensive red wine, the plastic cups from beneath the sink looked almost ridiculous, but Barbara didn’t seem to care as she handed him one and filled the other for herself.

“As for locking you up... there are exactly four reasons why incarceration is used as a sentence. Number one: retribution, and I think you don’t need any more of that. You’ve suffered more than enough, Jason, physically and emotionally. You know you did wrong. You _regret_. There is nothing more to be gained from causing you more pain. Number two: incapacitation. You were trained by Bruce and you haven’t slacked off over the years. I think at this point the only way to incapacitate you, would be to kill you.”

Jason couldn’t argue with that. He wasn’t sure the prison that could hold any of them had been built yet. He took a careful sip from his cup.

“Number three, deterrence. I’ve been monitoring your movements, Jason. You haven’t killed a single innocent civilian since Halloween. Hell, you’ve gone out of your way to _save_ people. I think you’ve deterred yourself perfectly fine.”

“Bruce would argue ‘innocence’ has nothing to do with it.”

“Bruce was an idealist with his heads in the clouds and a batarang up his ass,” Barbara stated as a matter of fact over her own red wine. “I applaud his moral code and I do wish you’d try to live by it, but truth is half the time you shoot one of the bastards, almost everyone in GCPD is going ‘thank god someone finally did it’. And I refuse to ignore all the good you’ve been doing for the last three months.”

 _All the good..._ Jason let the words bounce around his skull over a few more sips form the cup. There were thousands of people in Gotham who were alive today because of the things he had done over the last three months. Some of them knew. Most of them didn’t. It made no difference, in the end. “So what’s reason number four?”

Barbara finished her cup and put it into the sink carefully. “Rehabilitation.” She gave him a long hard look from head to toe before reaching for his hand once more. “And to be perfectly honest, I think you need that one more than anything else.” A slight grin graced her lips. “Do you know what the name ‘Jason’ means?”

“ _To heal_.” It had always seemed like a bad joke. It didn’t seem better now.

“Exactly.” Barbara nodded softly. “And you need to be true to your name right now, Jason. You need to _heal_. You need to _recover_. And you can’t do that behind bars and you certainly can’t do it when you’re dead.”

“So this is...” He used his free hand to gesture at the fresh, new apartment all around them. “This is you and the birds trying to rehabilitate me, huh?”

Barb gave him a crooked smile. “Is it working?”

He was about to fire back an equally snappish remark when his phone suddenly broke the silence between them. The alertness the notification sound had caused in him dissolved into sheer annoyance as he brought up the message. “Fucking hell...”

“Trouble?”

Jason scowled at her over his phone. “You tell me; you’re the one who gave my number to the stalking octopus from hell.” Oracle’s bright laughter did nothing to dissolve the tension. As a matter of fact, it only pissed him off more. “Seriously, Barb, do you realize what you’ve done? I’ve been getting texts and calls from him every damn night since we watched that stupid will in Wayne Tower!”

“Did it ever occur to you to reply?” At least some of his utter frustration must have carried over, if Barbara’s sudden quieting was anything to go by. The smile on her face had turned from flat-out amused to just slightly sad. “He just wants to know you’re really alive, Jason. Do you have any idea—”

At last, her hands let go of his fingers. Jason watched her retrieve the cup from the sink and pour in more wine. She downed it in one long chug.

“Jason, for the first month after Halloween, I spent every morning waking up thinking: ‘Are Bruce and Alfred really gone?’ ‘Is Jason really still alive?’ ‘Or did my brain just make all this shit up to cope with the trauma?’”

Barbara poured again before pointing at the phone in his hand. “You’re his _little brother_ , Jason. He spent fifteen months searching for you, day and night, only to watch you get shot on camera. He’s been mourning you for years. Dick just wants to know he didn’t hallucinate last Monday. Just text him back. I don’t care if it’s only ‘yes, I’m alive, fuck off, I don’t want to talk’. Just... let him know you’re alive, please? If he doesn’t get the hint, Tim and I will be happy to knock some sense into him.”

 “Why should I believe you?” Jason finished his cup, poured again – the wine was almost gone and somehow that made him disproportionally sad – and started nibbling on the plastic edge of his cup. “You’re the one who set me up to get tackle-hugged by him in front of my own fucking grave. You’re the one who dragged me to that presentation of Bruce’s will at Wayne Tower. You’re the one who’s arranged this place. I know an approaching intervention when I see one, Barb.”

“It’s not an intervention.” Despite the sternness of her words, Barbara’s voice remained gentle as ever. Jason still hadn’t figured out how she did that. She and Alfred, both. “I took you to the presentation, because it was Bruce’s last wish that ‘all of his sons’ be there, and despite what you may want to believe: you _are_ his son. I had you meet Dick before that, because I did not want you to have to deal with Lucius, Dick, Tim, and Bruce’s will all at once. I know it was a lot to take in on a single night, and I’m sorry for the pain it obviously caused you. It wasn’t ideal. I would have tried to let you and Dick meet a lot earlier, for his sake, if I had thought that you were ready for it, and if I had actually gotten a hold of you.”

“Good thing you didn’t.” He wasn’t sure how that would have gone down. He still wasn’t sure how his reunion with Dick hadn’t ended in a full-out brawl and broken bones. All he knew was that he had had about all the family reunions he could stomach for this month.

“And as for the apartment,” Babs continued as she emptied the bottle, “... I respect your wish for independence and distance. I really do, Jason, but you are _my little brother_ and right now you’re practically homeless. I am not letting you live on the street in the middle of goddamn Gotham winter! You deserve so much better than that.”

He didn’t, but there was no point in arguing with her. Stubbornness was a trait that ran in the family, even if they were not related by blood. He looked out the window on the other side of the living room and spotted a speck of the sky in the distance. The sky was starting to turn blue.

Barb saw it, too, and the sight made her shake her head. “Jason, could you do me a favor please?” He finished his cup of wine and set it down in the sink, together with Barb’s own empty cup. A tiny smile curved her lips. “I’d like to finish this conversation at eye level, if you don’t mind.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, but crouched down nonetheless. The motion, together with the pressure changes brought on by the blizzard, set off the nerve damage in his ankle just a little, but he was damned if he was going to let it show. Not when this ordeal was almost over.

The huge came so swift and sudden, yet so gently, he couldn’t even pinpoint when it had started. Barbara’s head rested lightly on his shoulder, her fiery red hair brushing against the ugly brand ever so slightly.

“It’s ok, if you don’t want any of us around yet,” Barbara muttered softly while running one of her hands up and down his spine. “It’s perfectly ok, even if Dick, Tim, and I don’t like it. You can’t force rehabilitation. You can’t force someone to get better.” She pulled him in tighter for just a second, before pulling back to break the hug and run her hands along his jaw line into his hair. “And we want you to get better. Don’t you ever doubt that, Jason. The rest will come in time.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what ‘the rest’ meant, but he was pretty damn sure he was in no condition to ask. He felt... more than tired... more than exhausted. He felt worn down, like all the crap of the last three months, up to and including All Hallow’s Eve had suddenly come crashing down on him, taking its toll on his body, mind, and soul. Barbara answered his silence with a quick kiss to his cheek.

“Do you want me to stay?”

“No.” He didn’t know how he knew that, but he really did not want her here tonight. “And you don’t want your darling hubby to sleep in a car either, do you?”

That made her laugh. “Wouldn’t be the worst place he ever caught a nap.” Barb shook her head, turned around, and started heading for the front door. Jason followed her with slow strides, taking in his surroundings as he went along. This was all his now. Somehow. She stopped just shy of the door. “And one more thing, Jason: I’m happy you’re back. We all are. Never forget that, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever...” He held the door open for her and blinked at the sudden influx of bright light from the hallway. The keys still felt strange in his pocket. “Now get out of here and go home.”

Barbara laughed as she headed for the elevator. “Don’t forget to text Dick!”

He waited until she had disappeared into the nearest elevator, before closing the door and re-activating the alarm. The re-configuration instructions were written out clearly on a card tucked inside the box inside of his apartment, and he changed the code immediately. He would have to tinker with it later, re-program it to include a longer, alphanumeric code and biometric feedback. If necessary, he’d just replace the entire damn thing. Either way, no one was getting in here without his permission.

For better or for worse, this place was his.

He had already switched off all the lights they had turned on throughout the tour and shrugged out of half his clothes, when his eyes fell onto the phone once more. He thought back to what Barbara had said earlier. ‘Yes, I’m alive, fuck off’ sounded like an excellent thing to send in reply, and he typed the letters in quickly and hit ‘send’.

Five seconds later, his mail box sprang to life with a series of loud beeps. Jason scowled as he picked up the phone and skimmed through the messages.

_oh thank god!!!!_

_i was afraid i was just hallucinating_

_thx 4 replying_

_if u r in ur apt already, look in drawer above fridge_

_look in box of cocoa puffs_

_good night lw_

“Oh, fuck you, Dick!”

His mind was still weeping at the lack of proper spelling or punctuation as he made his way back to the kitchen. Sure enough, there was an extra-large box of cocoa puffs next to the flour and the sugar in the cupboard above the fridge, and the cardboard had clearly been opened before. He retrieved the sealed bag of cereal first, then shook out the box. A simple white envelope fell to his feet, and Jason opened it with a frown. It felt too heavy to be just paper, but he started with the letter nonetheless. At least this time the writing was up to acceptable standards.

_Dear Jason,_

_I still can’t believe it’s really you. I feel like fifteen months of prayers have finally been answered three years late. Either way, I’m really, really happy that you are still alive. Please stay with us, okay?_

_As for this letter, you know, up until last Sunday I thought Barb had sent Tim to prank me two months ago. Turns out she knew all along that it was you. I only wish she had told me sooner._

_Thank you, Little Wing._

_Take care!_

_Dick_

He ditched the letter on the nearby counter and started rifling through the remainder of the envelope’s contents.

He came up to forty-eight dollars and twenty-five cents.


End file.
